Civil Service Examinations

How to be a Civil Servant

Get information about how to be a civil servant and recruitment systems used to regulate the access to civil service.

Access to Civil Service

All citizens have right to be civil servants in compliance with institutional principles of equality, merit and ability, as laid down in the present Statute and in the rest of the Spanish national law. Access will be regulated through processes that guarantee all constitutional principles before mentioned, as well as the following principles:

Publicity of announcements, as well as of their characteristics.

Openness.

Impartiality and professionalism of recruitment committees’ members.

Independence and technical discretionality regarding the performance of recruitment committees.

Correlation between content of recruitment processes and functions or tasks to be developed.

Speed of recruitment processes, without affecting objectivity.

Recruitment Systems

Recruitment processes will be open and they will assure the free attendance, without affecting that established for internal promotion and positive discrimination measures established by this Statute.

Recruitment committees will ensure that it is observed the principle of equal opportunities between women and men.

Recruitment processes will ensure that there is a correlation between the kind of tests that need to be passed and the tasks to be developed, including practical tests if they are necessary.

Tests will check the knowledge and the analytical capacity of candidates through exercises that prove they have required abilities and skills and that test their knowledge of languages. Exercises can be in writing or oral and, if necessary, physical tests can be performed.

Recruitment processes that include, apart from capacity tests, the assessment of merits will only mark them with a marking that will not decide on its own the result of the recruitment procedure.

Public Administrations can set up specialized and permanent committees to organized recruitment processes. These tasks can be entrusted to Institutes or Schools attached to the Public Administration.

In order to ensure the objectivity and the rationality of recruitment processes, tests can be complemented with the carrying out of courses, work-experience contracts, the explanation of candidates concerning their CVs, psychotechnical tests, or personal interviews. At the same time, medical examinations can be requested.

Permanent civil servants will be recruited through public competitive examinations and selection processes involving the assessment of merits and competitive examinations, which should include one or several tests in order to evaluate the candidates’ abilities and set up the order of priority. As an exception, by virtue of the law, they can be recruited through a competition based on merits.

Permanent labour staff will be recruited through public competitive examinations and selection processes involving the assessment of merits and competitive examinations, as it is stated in the previous section. They can be also recruited through a competition based on merits

Public Administrations can negotiate the ways of collaboration that, in the framework of collective agreements, regulate the actions of Trade Unions regarding the development of recruitment processes.

The number of people appointed as civil servants by recruitment committees cannot exceed the number of announced vacancies. It can be only exceeded if the own announcement forecasts it.

Nevertheless, if the number of people appointed as civil servants by recruitment committees is the same than the number of announced vacancies, with the aim of filling them before their appointment or before the day candidates take up their posts, the public administration could ask the recruitment committee for an additional list of candidates that follow the appointed candidates in order to appoint them as civil servants.